'Tis The Season

I love, love, LOVE this time of year!

But I am SO having trouble with the layout on my page! There should be a FULL view of my snowman, not HALF! Grrr! If anyone knows how to fix this, PLEASE let me know!

Kicking off the Christmas Season 'to do' list is, of course, getting my family newsletter and Christmas cards ready to mail. Took a family pic from our trip to Bates Nut Farm in Oct., and had it made into Christmas cards-turned out really good, and the price at Costco was right too! Got the family newsletter done and printed up last night, then spent some time addressing envelopes. Will mail them off tomorrow.

Jim has started hanging lights outside. For those of you who don't know, we have, for several years now, had a huge Christmas display outside for all to enjoy. Each year we add a little something more, and it really is quite a show! The park that we live in has an annual Christmas decorating contest, and never have we won any lower than 2nd place. Usually it's 1st place, but hey, winning is just the icing on the cake. We do this not only for ourselves, because it's something we enjoy looking at, but the community enjoys it too. Our neighbor directly across from us took 1st place last year, but he deserved it. He worked really hard on his display, and it was beautiful. I'm sure most of you have seen 'National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation'? How about 'Deck The Halls'? I think those stories are about US, except that we don't steal electricity or anything else from Gary (the neighbor affectionately known as 'the competition'). I told Jim maybe we should change our name to Griswold...

Our kids get involved too. If they see something that they think would look cool, they buy it and bring it over. We have a 5ft singing/dancing Santa, a snowboarding Santa, slide-loving penguins, watchful snowmen, gentle deer, and all sorts of cool things. And of course HUNDREDS of beautiful lights.

We're at the entrance to the park, so our place can be seen from 2 different streets. It's not at all uncommon for cars to literally park in front of our place, let their little kids out to enjoy the display, and even take pictures! For those of you who can't be here to see our display, I'll post some pics after we're all set up.

We still have Christmas shopping to do-nope, I haven't started yet. I'll get there....eventually.

There are just so many plans to make, and this is the ONE time of the year that I actually enjoy making them with the help of my family. It's Peyton's first Christmas too-and boy is she gonna be FUN! I can't wait to see her face when she sees the pretty display outside at Grandma & Grandpa's, and when she sees the pretty Christmas tree inside.

It's the most wonderful time of the year.....it truly IS.

Blessings~